Reviving Maximum Pressure: President Trump's Path to a Peaceful, Prosperous Middle East

President Trump’s decision to bring back his first Administration’s maximum pressure campaign has presented an opportunity to achieve a vision of peace and prosperity in the Middle East previously thought impossible.  His team can complement this sanctions approach by continuing the work of the first Trump Administration and expanding the Abraham Accords, while incorporating this approach into a broader global strategy in opposition to the China-Russia-Iran alignment.

As the past four years have shown, enriching and enabling the malign Iranian regime only leads to war and terror. As President Trump demonstrated in his first term, the best way to avoid these outcomes is through massive and effective sanctions on Iranian oil exports, which allow the regime to prop up its dysfunctional economy, fund terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, and inflict pain and suffering on the Iranian people.

This is why in the first Trump Administration, at President Trump’s direction, we successfully targeted Iran’s oil exports with historic sanctions; and by the end of our tenure, Iran’s oil exports had fallen to just about 400,000 barrels of oil a day. Like an animal caught in a trap, the regime thrashed and tried to break free by escalating tensions and instigating conflict.  President Trump met this escalation with steel resolve in the form of contained, lethal strikes – like that which claimed the life of Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani – that maintained deterrence while not putting American soldiers in harm’s way.  By bankrupting the Iranian regime and building a coalition of partners and allies willing to contain Iran through the Abraham Accords, the first Trump Administration laid the groundwork for a genuinely peaceful and prosperous Middle East.  I was proud to have contributed to this historic effort as Secretary of State.

Unfortunately, the Biden Administration favored appeasement rather than deterrence. It failed to continue our sanctions program, made obscene ransom payments to the Ayatollah, and revived the Obama-era falsehood that the regime would moderate – if only the right deal could be struck.  Led astray by fantasy, Obama’s successors in Team Biden went right back to enriching the Iranian regime at the expense of America’s security and that of our allies. At one point in the Biden Administration, Iran was exporting roughly 2 million barrels of oil per day - five times more than it had been just a few years prior – and Iran sold $144 billion worth of oil over Team Biden’s first three years.  You can draw a direct line from this infusion of wealth to the grotesque attacks by Hamas on October 7, the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea, and the deaths of six American service members from attacks perpetrated by Iranian militias.

The Iranian regime’s revival did more than just destabilize the Middle East once more – it also fueled the burgeoning China-Russia-Iran axis.  Iran built and sold thousands of drones to Russia that bolstered Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sold more oil than ever to the People’s Republic of China.  By abandoning our maximum pressure campaign, the Biden Administration sent a signal to America’s partners and allies that we were not reliable.  This was a disaster for America’s foreign policy and national security.

President Trump’s decision to reverse Biden’s appeasement and bring back our maximum pressure campaign was necessary; and thanks to Israel’s noble efforts, despite Team Biden’s constant pressure, there is now a path forward for a prosperous and peaceful Middle East.  The Jewish state’s incapacitation of Hezbollah helped lead to the downfall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza is nearing victory.  These realities have left the regime in Tehran at its weakest point in years.  Now is the time not only for maximum pressure to return with support for the organized opposition within Iran, but also for the White House to fully support our ally Israel in its mission to ensure Iran never reaches its goal of creating a nuclear weapon – just as we did in President Trump’s first term.   This will set the stage for the Iranian people to decide their own future instead of the tyrannical despots in Tehran, and it will give our partners and allies in the region the space and security they need to deepen their economic and security ties. 

The Biden Administration ignored President Ronald Reagan’s defining maxim of “peace through strength” – its officials felt they could engineer peace without ever having to demonstrate genuine strength.  This failure left the world a far more dangerous place.  But in just his first few weeks back in office, President Trump has already demonstrated he will not make this mistake.  He has sent a clear message to America’s allies and adversaries alike: The days of American weakness are over, and American strength is back.  So long as President Trump continues to establish American strength, peace will follow.

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